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Neuroscience of the 20th century rested on the Newtonian principle that aphysical system is made of independent parts which interact only with theirimmediate neighbors and whose behavior over time is deterministic. Withinthis paradigm, a mind is the product of a brain, which is one particularsystem of the many that populate the universe. This is a useful paradigm forthe study of many material phenomena, but it is not what the Physics of the20th century prescribed. It is what Physics prescribed a century earlier,before it was showed to be wrong.Neurological descriptions of the brain that are based on Newtons Physicsare based on a Physic that is known to have limitations at a small and largescale. 20th century neurologists assumed that the brain and its parts behavelike classical objects, and that quantum effects are negligible, even whilethe "objects" that they were studying got smaller and smaller. What 20thcentury neurologists were doing when they studied the microstructure of thebrain from a Newtonian perspective was equivalent to organizing a trip tothe Moon on the basis of Aristotles Physics, neglecting Newtons theory ofgravitation.Quantum ConsciousnessIf no theory of consciousness based on classical Physics is satisfactory inexplaining how consciousness emerges from the electrochemical activity ofthe brain, then maybe the problem lies with classical Physics. Physicistsbegan in the 1920s to advocate an approach to consciousness based on 20th-century Physics rather than classical Physics.Loosely speaking, the point is that consciousness is unlikely to arise fromclassical properties of matter (the more we understand the structure and theelectrochemical fabric of the brain, the less we understand howconsciousness can occur at all). But, for example, Quantum Theory allows fora new concept of matter altogether, which may well leave cracks forconsciousness, for something that is not purely material or purely extra-material.Of course, the danger in this way of thinking is to relate consciousness andQuantum Theory only because they are both poorly understood: what they have

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in common is a degree of "fuzziness" that allows us to tinker withdefinitions.The advantage of Quantum Theory, though, is that it allows for "non-local"properties and provides a framework to explain how entities get "entangled",precisely the phenomena that electrochemical brain processes are not enoughto explain.The unity of consciousness is a favorite example. A conscious state is thewhole of the conscious state and cannot be divided into components (I cantseparate the feeling of red from the feeling of the apple when I think of ared apple). Newtons Physics is less suitable than Quantum Theory fordealing with such a system, especially since Bells Theorem proved thateverything is permanently interacting. Indeterminate behavior (for example,free will) is another favorite, since Heisenbergs principle allows for someunpredictability in nature that Newtons Physics ruled out. And, of course,the mind/body dualism reminds Physicists of the wave/particle dualism. Infact, Descartes dualism is less credible within the framework of QuantumPhysics because, in Quantum Physics, matter is ultimately not a solidsubstance.Quantizing the MindThe pioneer of "quantum consciousness" theories was the Ukrainian chemistAlfred Lotka, who in 1924, when Quantum Theory was still in its infancy,proposed that the mind controls the brain by modulating the quantum jumpsthat would otherwise lead to a completely random existence.The first detailed quantum model of consciousness was probably the USAphysicist Evan Walkers synaptic tunneling model ("The Nature ofConsciousness", 1970), in which electrons can "tunnel" between adjacentneurons, thereby creating a virtual neural network overlapping the real one.It is, Walker claims, this virtual nervous system that, according to Walker,produces consciousness and that can direct the behavior of the real nervoussystem.Walker based his theory on two postulates: 1. Consciousness is real and

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nonphysical; and 2. Physical reality is connected to consciousness by aphysically fundamental quantity. Walker believes that the quantum tunnelingeffect satisfies both postulates. He can even write the equation forconsciousness (the number of electrons that, thanks to the tunneling effect,manage to connect two active synapses). Following the Hungarian physicistEugene Wigner, Walker proposes to add a term to Schroedinger’s equation thatwould make it nonlinear and that would explain what causes the collapse ofthe wave: a measurement of information. This term would disappear once themeasurement is performed. Basically, this term would signal the presence ofthe observer. By introducing the same "information term" in Dirac’sequation, Walker derives another possible interpretation: reality isconsciousness observing itself. Dirac’s equation becomes simply the equationof an observer observing.The "real" nervous system operates by means of synaptic messages. Thevirtual one operates by means of the quantum effect of tunneling (particlespassing through an energy barrier that classically they should not be ableto climb). The real one is driven by classical laws; the virtual one byquantum laws. Consciousness is, therefore, driven by quantum laws, eventhough the brains behavior can be described by classical laws.Later theories share with Walker’s the view that the brain "instantiates"not one but two systems: a classical one and a quantum one; the second onebeing responsible for the properties of mental life (such as consciousness)that are not easily reduced to the properties of the classical brain.The British neurologist John Eccles speculated that synapses in the cortexrespond in a probabilistic manner to neural excitation ("Do Mental EventsCause Neural Events Analogously To The Probability Fields Of QuantumMechanics?", 1986). That probability might well be governed by quantumuncertainty given the extremely small size of the synapsis microscopicorgan that emits the neurotransmitter. Eccles speculates that an immaterialmind (in the form of "psychons") controls the quantum "jumps" and turns theminto voluntary excitations of the neurons that account for body motion.Drawing from Quantum Mechanics and from Bertrand Russells idea thatconsciousness provides a kind of "window" onto the brain, the philosopher

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Michael Lockwood advanced a theory of consciousness as a process ofperception of brain states. First he noted that Special Relativity impliesthat mental states must be physical states (mental states must be in spacegiven that they are in time). Then Lockwood interpreted the role of theobserver in Quantum Mechanics as the role of consciousness in the physicalworld (as opposed to a simple interference with the system being observed).Lockwood argued that sensations must be intrinsic attributes of physicalstates of the brain: in quantum lingo, each observable attribute (e.g., eachsensation) corresponds to an observable of the brain. Consciousness scansthe brain to look for sensations. It does not create them: it just seeksthem.There are also models of consciousness that invoke other dimensions. Theunification theories that attempt at unifying General Relativity (i.e.gravitation) and Quantum Theory (i.e., the weak, electrical and strongforces) typically add new dimensions to the four ones we experience. Thesedimensions differ from space in that they are bound (actually, rolled up intiny tubes) and in that they only exist for changes to occur in particleproperties. The hyperspace of the USA physicist Saul-Paul Sirag, for example("Consciousness - A Hyperspace View", 1993), contains many physicaldimensions and many "mental" dimensions (time is one of the dimensions thatthey have in common).Bose-Einstein CondensatesPossibly the most popular candidate to yield quantum consciousness has beenBose-Einstein condensation (theoretically predicted in 1925 and firstachieved in a gas in 1995). The most popular example of Bose-Einsteincondensation is superconductivity.The fascination with Bose-Einstein condensates is that they are the mosthighly ordered structures in nature (before their discovery by AlbertEinstein and Satyendranath Bose, that record was owned by crystals). Theorder is such that each of their constituents appears to occupy all theirspace and all their time: for all purposes the constituents of a Bose-Einstein condensate share the same identity. In other words, theconstituents behave just like one constituent (the photons of a laser beam

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behave just like one photon) and the Bose-Einstein condensate behaves likeone single particle. Another odd feature of Bose-Einstein condensates isthat they seem to possess a primitive form of free will.A Bose-Einstein condensate is the equivalent of a laser, except that it isthe atoms, rather than the photons, that behave identically, as if they werea single atom. Technically speaking, as temperature drops, each atoms wavegrows, until the waves of all the atoms begin to overlap and eventuallymerge. After they merged, the atoms are located within the same region inspace, they travel at the same speed, they vibrate at the same frequency,etc.: they become indistinguishable. The atoms have reached the lowestpossible energy, but Heisenbergs principle makes it impossible for this tobe zero energy: it is called "zero-point" energy, the minimum energy an atomcan have.The intriguing feature of a Bose-Einstein condensate is that the many partsof a system not only behave as a whole, they become a "whole". Theiridentities merge in such a way that they lose their individuality.It was thought that Bose-Einstein condensation could be achieved only atvery low temperatures. In the late 1960s, the British physicist HerbertFroehlich proved the feasibility, and even the likelihood, of Bose-Einsteincondensation at body temperatures in living matter (precisely, in cellmembranes). This opened the doors to the possibility that all living systemscontain Bose-Einstein condensates.He argued that electrical charged molecules of living tissues behave likeelectric dipoles. When digestion of food generates enough energy, allmolecular dipoles line up and oscillate in a perfectly coordinate manner,which may result in a Bose-Einstein condensate.Biological oscillators of this kind are pervasive in nature: living matteris made of water and other biomolecules equipped with electrical dipoles,which react to external stimuli with a spontaneous breakdown of theirrotational symmetry.The biological usefulness of such biological oscillators is that, like laser

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light, they can amplify signals and encode information (e.g., they can"remember" an external stimulus).Above all, coherent oscillations are crucial to many processes ofintegration of information in the brain.Quantum effects at the level of the protein (which is, after all, abiomolecular information processing system) were studied by Michael Conrad("Quantum Molecular Computing", 1992), who argued that the molecules insideeach cell might be implementing a kind of quantum associative memory.Quantum Self TheoryThe British psychiatrist Ian Marshall ("Consciousness and Bose-Einsteincondensates", 1989) showed similarities between the holistic properties ofcondensates and those of consciousness, and suggested that consciousness mayarise from the "excitation" of such a Bose-Einstein condensate. InMarshalls hypothesis, the brain contains a Froehlich-style condensate, and,whenever the condensate is excited by an electrical field, consciousexperience occurs. The brain maintains dynamical coherence (i.e., theability to organize millions of neural processes into the coherent whole ofthought) thanks to an underlying quantum coherent state (the Bose-Einsteincondensate).Furthermore, Marshall thinks that the collapse of a wave function is notcompletely random, as predicted by Quantum Theory, but exhibits a preferencefor "phase difference". Such "phase differences" are the sharpest in Bose-Einstein condensates. This implies that the wave function tends to collapsetowards Bose-Einstein condensates, i.e. that there is a universal tendencytowards creating the living and thinking structures that populate ourplanet. Marshall views this as an evolutionary principle inherent in ouruniverse.In other words, the universe has an innate tendency towards life andconsciousness. They are ultimately due to the mathematical properties of thequantum wave function, which favors the evolution of life and consciousness.

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Marshall thinks we "must" exist and think, in accordance with the stronganthropic principle (that things are the way they are because otherwise wewould not exist).Marshall offered a solution to the paradox of "adaptive evolution",discovered in 1988 by John Cairns: some bacteria can mutate very quickly,way too quickly for Darwins theory to be true. If all genes mutated at thatpace, they would mostly produce mutations that cannot survive. What drivesevolution is natural selection, which prunes each generation of mutations.But natural selection does not have the time to operate on the very rapidmutations of these bacteria. There must be another force at work that"selects" only the mutations that are useful for survival. Marshall thinksthat the other force is the wave functions tendency towards choosing statesof life and consciousness. Each mutation is inherently biased towardssuccess.His wife, the USA philosopher Danah Zohar, expanded on his theory. Zoharviews the theory of Bose-Einstein condensation as a means to reducemind/body dualism to wave/particle dualism: the wave aspect of nature yieldsthe "mental" (conscious experience), whereas the particle aspect of natureyields the material.Zohar is fascinated by the behavior of bosons. Particles divide intofermions (such as electrons, protons, neutrons) and bosons (photons,gravitons, gluons). Bosons are particles of "relationship", because they areused by other particles to interact. When two systems interact (electricity,gravitation or whatever), they exchange bosons. Fermions are well-definedindividual entities, just like large-scale matter is. But bosons cancompletely merge and become one entity, more like conscious states do. Zoharclaims that bosons are the basis for the conscious life, and fermions forthe material life.The properties of matter arise from the properties of fermions. Matter issolid because fermions cannot merge. Likewise, she thinks that theproperties of the conscious mind arise from the properties of bosons,because bosons can share the same state and they are about relationships.

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This would also explain how there can be a "self". The brain changes all thetime and therefore the "self" is never the same. I am never myself again.How can there be a "self"? Zohar thinks that the self does change all thetime, but quantum interference makes each new self sprout from the oldselves. Wave functions of past selves overlap with the wave function of thecurrent self. Through this "quantum memory" each new "quantum self"reincarnates past selves.The Ubiquity of ConsciousnessThe USA physicist Nick Herbert thinks that consciousness is a pervasiveprocess in nature. Consciousness is as fundamental a component of theuniverse as elementary particles and forces. The conscious mind can bedetected by three features of quantum theory: randomness, "thinglessness"(objects acquire attributes only once they are observed) andinterconnectedness (John Bells discovery that, once two particles haveinteracted, they remain connected). Herbert thinks that these three featuresof inert matter can account for three basic features of our conscious mind:free will, essential ambiguity, and deep psychic "connectedness". Scientistsmay be vastly underestimating the quantity of consciousness in the universe.The USA computer scientist James Culbertson speculated that consciousnessmay be a relativistic feature of space-time. He, too, thinks thatconsciousness permeates all of nature, so that every object has a degree ofconsciousness.According to Relativity, our lives are world lines in space-time. Space-timedoes not happen: it always exists. It is our brain that shows us a movie ofmatter evolving in time.All space-time events are conscious: they are conscious of other space-timeevents. The "experience" of a space-time event is static, a frozen region ofspace-time events. All the subjective features of the "psycho-space" of anobserver derive from the objective features of the region of space-time thatthe observer is connected to. Special circuits in our brain create theimpression of a time flow, of a time-travel through the region of space-timeevents connected to the brain.

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Memory of an event is re-experiencing that space-time event, which is fixedin space-time. We dont store an event, we only keep a link to it. Consciousmemory is not in the brain: it is in space-time.The inner life of a system is its space-time history. To clarify his view,Culbertson presents the case of two robots. First a robot is built andlearns German, then another robot is built which is identical to the firstone. Culbertson claims that the second robot does not speak German, even ifit is identical to the one that speaks German. Their space-time historiesare different.At the same time, Culbertson thinks that our consciousness is much more thanan illusory travel through space-time, and it can, in turn, influencereality. Quantum Theory prescribes that reality be a sequence of randomquantum jumps. Culbertson believes that they are not random but depend onthe systems space-time history, i.e. on its inner life.The Implicate OrderIn the 1950s the USA physicist David Bohm extended his ideas about the"implicate order" to the conscious mind.Quantum and Relativity theories may be very different, but they agree indenying the existence of single static particles, they agree in describingthe world as an undivided whole in constant flux (albeit in completelydifferent ways) in which all parts of the universe are constantlyinteracting; and those parts include the observer, the "I". The universe ischaracterized by a "flow" that integrates everything: individual forms arethe equivalent of the still frames of an object in motion.It turns out that we perceive the "flow" of reality through those staticimages, but those still images are only a simplification of motion. Byanalogy, what goes on in our mind is a stream of consciousness, from whichwe can abstract concepts, ideas, etc (forms of thought) that are mereinstances of that flow of thought. Thought is a kind of movement, andconcepts are kinds of objects. Bohm believed that there is just one flow, inwhich both matter and mind flow, and that this flow can be known only

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implicitly through the forms (the still frames) that we can grasp out ofthis flow.Bohm rejected the distinction between what we are thinking and what is goingon, as well as the notion that one part of reality (my conscious mind) canknow another part of reality: it is wrong to separate the thinker from thethought. The thinker is not separate from the reality that he thinks about,the thinker and that reality are parts of the same flow.The belief that thinker and the object of his thinking (between thought andnon-thought) are separate permeates our conscious life. This conviction iseven built into the structure of language itself: modern language is basedon the pattern "subject- verb- object", that clearly separates the subjectand the object. But in reality the key actor is the verb, not the subject,and the verb unites the subject and the object in one, undivided action.At the level of the "implicate order", which is a sort of "higherdimension", there is no difference between matter and mind. That differencearises within the "explicate order" (the conventional space-time ofPhysics). As we travel inwards, we travel towards that higher dimension, theimplicate order, in which mind and matter are the same. As we traveloutwards, we travel towards the explicate order in which subject and objectare separate.There is an inherent affinity between consciousness and implicate order. Forexample, when we listen to music we directly perceive the implicate order,not just the explicate order of those sounds.Bohm’s quantum field contains "active in-formation" that determines whathappens to the particle ("in-formation" as in "give form"). Bohm interpretedthe "active in-formation" of the quantum field that, in his view,accompanies each particle, as the "mental" (proto-conscious) property of theparticle. Every particle has a rudimentary "mind-like" quality. Matter has"mental" properties, as well as physical properties. In-formation turns outto be the bridge between the two worlds. The two sides cannot be separatedbecause they are entangled in the same quantum field. At the lower level ofreality, mental (conscious) and physical processes are essentially the same.

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The Mental State Of ParticlesDavid Bohm’s quantum field contains "active information": the form of thefield determines the energy and momentum of a particle. Active informationis information that is relevant to determining the movement of a particle.This information is not an opinion: it is the objective aspect of reality.Bohm interpreted this kind of information as the "mental" property ofparticles. Thus matter has "mental" properties as well as physicalproperties.A quantum level mediates between an underlying mental level and the physicallevel that we observe. Bohm turns the table on supervenience: it is not themental that supervenes upon the physical, it is the brain states that aredependent on mental states.On top of Bohms theory, The Finnish philosopher Paavo Pylkkanen offered asemiotic theory of the particle: the quantum field of the particle can beregarded as containing information about the environment surrounding theparticle. The form of the wave function reflects the form of theenvironment. This form, in turn, determines the trajectory of the particle.The quantum field is a form of representation. Semiotically speaking (andusing Peirces terminology), the quantum field is the sign, the environmentis the object and the trajectory is the "interpretant".Tripartite IdealismThe USA physicist Henry Stapp elaborated on ideas already advanced inprevious decades by John Von Neumann and Eugene Wigner that, basically,consciousness creates reality.Stapp’s theory of consciousness is grounded in Heisenbergs interpretationof Quantum Mechanics, that reality is a sequence of collapses of wavefunctions, i.e. of quantum discontinuities. Of all interpretations ofQuantum Theory, this is also the closest to William Jamess view of themental life as "experienced sense objects".Stapp’s view harks back to the heydays of Quantum Theory, when it was clear

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to its founders that "science is what we know". Science specifies rules thatconnect bits of knowledge. Each of us is a "knower" and our joint knowledgeof the universe is the subject of Science. Quantum Theory is therefore a"knowledge-based" discipline. This view was "pragmatic" because itprescribed how to perform experiments, and it separated the system to beobserved from the observer and from the instrument.Von Neumann introduced an "ontological" approach to this knowledge-baseddiscipline, which brought the observer and the instrument into the state ofthe system. Stapp describes Von Neumanns view of Quantum Theory through asimple definition: "the state of the universe is an objective compendium ofsubjective knowings". This statement describes the fact that the state ofthe universe is represented by a wave function which is a compendium of allthe wave functions that each of us can cause to collapse with ourobservations. That is why it is a collection of subjective acts, although anobjective one.Stapp basically achieves a new form of idealism: all that exists is thatsubjective knowledge. Therefore the universe is not about matter: it isabout subjective experience. Quantum Theory does not talk about matter, ittalks about our act of perceiving matter. Stapp rediscovers GeorgeBerkeleys idealism: we only know our perceptions (observations).Stapps model of consciousness is tripartite. Reality is a sequence ofdiscrete events in the brain. Each event translates into an increase ofknowledge. That knowledge comes from observing "systems". Each event isdriven by three processes that operate together: • The "Schroedinger process" is a mechanical, deterministic, process that predicts the state of the system in a fashion similar to Newtons Physics: given its state at a given time, we can use equations to calculate its state at a different time. The only difference is that Schroedingers equations describe the state of a system as a set of possibilities, whereas Newton’s equations described it as just one certainty. • The "Heisenberg process" is a conscious choice that we make when we decide to perform an observation. The formalism of Quantum Theory

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implies that we can know something only when we ask Nature a question. This implies, in turn, that we have a degree of control over Nature. Depending on which question we ask or not ask, we can affect the state of the universe. Stapp mentions the "Zeno effect" as a well known process in which we can alter the course of the universe by asking questions (it is the phenomenon by which a system is "frozen" if we keep observing the same observable very rapidly). We have to make a conscious decision about which question to ask Nature (which observable to observe). Otherwise nothing is going to "happen". • The "Dirac process" gives the answer to our question. Nature replies with an "observed" quantity, and, as far as we can tell, the answer is totally random. Once Nature has replied, we have learned something: we have increased our knowledge. This is a change in the state of the universe, which directly corresponds to a change in the state of our brain. Technically, there occurs a reduction of the wave function compatible with the fact that has been learned.Stapps interpretation of Quantum Theory is that there are many knowers.Each knowers act of knowledge (each individual increment of knowledge)results in a new state of the universe. One persons increment of knowledgechanges the state of the entire universe, and, of course, it changes it foreverybody else too.Quantum Theory is not about the behavior of matter, but about our knowledgeof such behavior."Thinking" is a sequence of events of knowing, driven by those threeprocesses.Instead of dualism or materialism, one is faced with a sort of interactive"trialism", all aspects of which are actually mind-like. First, the physicalaspect of Nature (the Schroedinger equation) is a compendium of subjectiveknowledge. Second, the conscious act of asking a question is what drives theactual transition from one state to another, i.e. the evolution of theuniverse. And, finally, there is a choice made from the outside, the replyof Nature, which, as far as we can tell, is random.

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Stapp revives idealism by showing that Quantum Theory is about knowledge,not matter. The universe is a repository of knowledge, that we have accessto and upon which our consciousness has control.The Illusion of the BodyVon Neumann’s analysis of the collapse of the wave is also the basis foridealist theories that border on Eastern philosophy. For example, the Indianphysicist Amit Goswami criticizes materialism (the view that consciousnessis a material phenomenon, and that matter is the only substance) andendorses idealism (the view that matter is a mental phenomenon, andconsciousness is the only substance).Goswamis idealism is based on a simple postulate: that consciousnesscollapses the quantum wave, as Von Neumann originally claimed. Goswamiclaims that this brand of idealism has no problem with some notoriousquantum "paradoxes". Basically, the "oddities" of Quantum Mechanics are inour mind, not in the world. For example, Schroedingers cat could notpossibly be both alive and dead in the real world, but it can be in ourminds.Paul Wigner extended Von Neumanns meditation by asking: if a friend tellsme what he observed, at which point did the wave collapse, when the friendcarried out her observation or when I carried out the observation of myfriend telling me the result of his observation? If one thinks that thefriend collapsed the wave, then the problem is that two friends observingthe same phenomenon would both collapse the wave, and possibly observeopposite outcomes. If one thinks that I collapse the wave when I listen tomy friend, then my friends knowledge depends on her talking to me.Goswami explains Paul Wigners dilemma by arguing that there is only oneconsciousness, only one subject, and not many individual, separate subjects.There is, ultimately, only one observer. He also cites the non-locality ofQuantum Mechanics as evidence that there is only one consciousness in theuniverse. Goswami credits consciousness with a deliberate act of determiningreality: consciousness "chooses" (not just picks up) the outcome of ameasurement.

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Goswami thinks that a mind is made of ideas or thoughts, and he envisionsthese mental objects as fully equivalent to the material objects (theparticles) studied by Quantum Mechanics. Thus they must obey the samePhysics, i.e. the same theories about uncertainty, measurement and non-locality. He views the brain as both a quantum system and a measuringapparatus. The possibilities of the quantum bran are unconscious processes,and the equivalent of the physical observation is the one unconsciousprocess that becomes conscious. Consciousness "chooses" which unconsciousprocess becomes conscious (just like it "chooses" the outcome of any othermeasurement). Consciousness "chooses" its own conscious experience.The Illusion of the BodyThe USA physicist Fred-Alan Wolf argued that the source of matter isconscious mind. The conscious mind "invents" a fictitious body and then itstarts believing that "it is" the body.Wolf makes reality arise from the limitations that Quantum Theory imposes onthe human mind: we cannot ever know the exact position of a particle,therefore the particle is a purely mental hypothesis, therefore it existsonly because our mind cannot ever know all about it. If we extend this lineof reasoning to all matter, we reach the conclusion that the entire worldthat we perceive is an illusion, and that illusion is due to the fact thatour mind cannot know the world as it really is. Reality has to do withperception of reality. If nobody observes it, it does not exist.If reality is created by the observer, where is the observer? Wolf claimsthat the observer is not in the brain. His conclusion is that the observer,by observing, becomes the body: the observed and the observer are the samething. After all, it is the observer who creates the physical world: thatalso includes the observers own body.The many-verse model of Quantum Theory states that all possible alternativesof a quantum system actually take place, one in each possible world, andthat the observer splits in as many observers as possible worlds. Eachobserver in each world observes only one of the many possible realities. Theworld and the observer in it keep splitting as more possibilities arise. So

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conscious mind and matter get intertwined into story lines. Each story lineis a memory of a past. Everything is alive because everything has a storyline, which is both mind and matter. The story lines of a complex objectform a "braid". The braid of story lines in a human body is a "script". Ascript is the collection of all the stories told by all the cells of thebody. Bodies are scripts. Each cell is both matter and mind. The consciousmind is all over the body.Wolf does not believe that Darwinian evolution alone can account for thebirth of life and the working of natural selection. He believes thatadditional information is needed to start the mechanism of life, and thatinformation must be coming from the future. Based on the same ideas fromQuantum Theory (that reality exists only insofar as somebody observes it),Wolf claims that Nature produced the right organisms to survive in theirenvironment because information flowed back from the future to the presentabout which organisms made sense. An observer can change the past by fixingthe outcome of an observation: this would determine the past events that ledto that outcome. Every time we "fix" the outcome of an observation, we forcea certain past on the object of our observation. Our conscious mind cancreate a past from all the possible pasts. (This is yet another variation onthe "Zeno effect": the life of a particle depends on how many times weobserve it, because each observation changes its state).Space, time, matter and consciousness are tied together by Relativity andQuantum Theory: Relativity binds together space-time and matter, whileQuantum Theory binds together matter and consciousness.Holonomic ConsciousnessBoth David Bohm and the psychologist Karl Pribram advocated the hologram asa paradigm to explain the unity and holistic property of consciousness. Ahologram is another product of a quantum phenomenon: it arises frominformation carried by a laser beam, which can be viewed as a particularkind of Bose-Einstein condensate.The brain stores information in a distributed manner that provides for faulttolerance and for "cue-based" retrieval. It is fault-tolerant because damage

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to one portion of the information does not cause damage to the informationas a whole; and it is cue-based because information can be retrieved basedon just partial information.Pribram believes that the brain organizes information by interferencepatterns just like a hologram. Holography, invented in 1948 by the Britishphysicist Dennis Gabor, employs coherent beams of light. A hologram is apermanent record of the interference between two waves of coherent light.Each part of the hologram contains each part of the interfering waves. Thismeans that each part of the hologram contains the entire image. The entirehologram contains more details about the image, but the image is present inevery part of the hologram. When re-illuminated with one of the originalcoherent lights, a three-dimensional image appears.It turns out that the storage capacity of holograms is enormous.Pribrams "holonomic" model of memory relies on the fact that manyproperties of the brain are shared by holograms.In Pribrams opinion a sensory perception is transformed into a "brainwave", i.e. into a pattern of electro-magnetic activation that propagatesthrough the brain just like the wave-front in a liquid. This crossing of thebrain provides the interpretation of the sensory perception in the form of a"memory wave", which in turn crosses the brain. The various waves thattravel through the brain can interfere. The interference of a memory waveand a perceptual (e.g., visual) wave generates a structure that resembles ahologram.Pribram believes that the same equations used by Gabor to develop holography(Fourier transforms) are used by the brain to analyze sensory data. Heshowed that all perceptions (and not only colors or sounds) can be analyzedinto their component frequencies of oscillation and therefore treated byFourier analysis.Quantum Brain DynamicsThe Heisenberg and Von Neumann tradition viewed the brain as a "quantum

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measuring device". But the Japanese physicist Kunjo Yasue claims that brainsubstrates uphold second-order quantum fields, which cannot be treated asmere measuring devices.Yasue, building on the quantum field theory developed in the 1960s by theJapanese physicist Hiroomi Umezawa and on his concept of "corticons" as moreprimitive than "neurons", developed a "quantum neurophysics" to explain howthe classical world can originate from quantum processes in the brain. Heshowed that brain dynamics can be represented by a "brain wave equation"similar to Schroedingers wave equation.Yasue thinks that several layers of the brain can host quantum processes,whose quantum properties explain consciousness and cognition. Yasue presentsthe brain as a macroscopic quantum system. He focuses on water mega-molecules in the space between neurons, which can combine to form extendedquantum systems, interacting with the neural networks. He focuses on thesensory system, whose quantum field causes some special molecules in themembrane of the neuron to undergo Froehlich condensation and cause, in turn,macroscopic coherence.He focuses on structures such as microtubules which lie inside the neuron,and which contain quasi-crystalline water molecules that again lendthemselves to quantum effects. The function of this quantum field could becognitive: some particular quantum states could record memory.Yasue focuses on a bioplasma of charged particles that interact with theelectromagnetic field, an ideal vehicle for a merge of the sensory quantumfield with the memory quantum field, an ideal vehicle for the creation ofclassical reality. He argues that classical order can continually unfold inthis bioplasma.Yasue shows how consciousness could arise from the interaction between theelectromagnetic field and molecular fields of water and protein.Furthermore, Yasue maintains that the evolution of the neural wave functionis not random, as would result from the traditional quantum theories, butoptimized under a principle of "least neural action". Random effects ofconsciousness are replaced by a "cybernetic" consciousness that is more in

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the tradition of the self as a free-willing agent.Yasue is not a connectionist. The fact that neurons are organized inside thebrain is of negligible importance in his theory.Quantum-gravitational ConsciousnessThe British physicist Roger Penrose believes that consciousness must be aquantum phenomenon and that neurons are too big to account forconsciousness. The USA biologist Stuart Hameroff provided a bettercandidate: the "cytoskeleton". Inside neurons there is a "cytoskeleton", thestructure that holds cells together, whose "microtubules" (hollow proteincylinders 25-nanometers in diameter) control the function of synapses.Penrose believes that consciousness is a manifestation of the "quantumcytoskeletal state" and its interplay between quantum and classical levelsof activity. (Penrose implicitly attributes a special status only to themicrotubules that are in the brain, but they are also ubiquitous among cellsin the rest of the body and the same quantum argument could apply formicrotubules in the foot).Reality emerges from the collapse or reduction of the wave function. ButPenrose makes a distinction between "subjective" and "objective" reduction.Subjective reduction is what happens when an observer measures a quantity ina quantum system: the system is not in any specific state (the system is ina "superposition" of possible states) until it is observed, and theobservation causes the system to reduce (or "collapse") to a specific state.This is the only reduction known to traditional Quantum Theory. Objectivereduction is, instead, a Penrose discovery, part of his attempt to unifyRelativity Theory and Quantum Theory.Superposed states each have their own space-time geometry. Under specialcircumstances, which microtubules are suitable for, the separation of space-time geometry of the superposed states (i.e., the "warping" of these space-times) reaches a point (the quantum gravity threshold) where the system mustchoose one state. The system must then spontaneously and abruptly collapseto that one state. So, objective reduction is a type of collapse of the wavefunction that occurs when the universe must choose between significantly

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different space-time geometries.This "self-collapse" results in particular "conformational states" thatregulate neural processes. These conformational states can interact withneighboring states to represent, propagate and process information. Eachself-collapse corresponds to a discrete conscious event. Sequences of eventsthen give rise to a "stream" of consciousness. Proteins somehow "tune" theobjective reduction which is thus self-organized, or "orchestrated".In other words, the quantum phenomenon of objective reduction controls theoperation of the brain through its effects on coherent flows insidemicrotubules of the cytoskeleton.In general, the collapse of the wave function is what gives the laws ofnature a non-algorithmic element. Otherwise we would simply be machines andwe would have no consciousness.Penrose and Hameroff believe that "protoconscious" information is encoded inspace-time geometry at the fundamental Planck scale and that a self-organizing Planck-scale process results in consciousnessBasically, Penrose believes in a Platonic scenario of conscious states thatexist in a world of their own, and to which our minds have access. However,Penrose’s "world of ideas" is a physicists world: quantum spin networksencode proto-conscious states and different configurations of quantum spingeometry represent varieties of conscious experience. Access to these states(consciousness as we know it) originates when a self-organizing process (theobjective reduction), somehow coupled with neural activity, collapsesquantum wave functions at Planck-scale geometry.There is a separate mental world, but it is grounded in the physical world.Consciousness is the bridge between the brain and space-time geometry.The New Materialism: Naturalistic DualismThe Australian philosopher David Chalmers believes that consciousness is due

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to "protoconscious" properties that must be ubiquitous in matter and that"psychophysical" laws, not of the "reductionist" kind that Physics employs,will account for how conscious experience arise from those properties. Thereis, instead, nothing mysterious about our cognitive faculties, such aslearning and remembering: they can be explained by the physical sciences thesame way these sciences explained physical phenomena.In a sense, Chalmers changed the scope of the mind-body problem, byenlarging the "body" to include the brain and its cognitive processes, andby restricting "mind" to conscious experience. Cognition migrates to thebody. Consciousness, on the other hand, is truly a different substance, or,better, a different set of properties, and cannot indeed be explained by the"natural" laws of the physical sciences. The study of consciousness requiresa different set of laws, because consciousness is due to a different set ofproperties.Chalmers contends that mental (or, better, brain) activity is more than justconscious experience. States of the brain cause behavior. For example, Idrink because I am thirsty, I move my hands because I want to grab anobject, I buy a plane ticket because I believe the fare will go up. These"mental" states may or may not be conscious. Chalmers thereforedistinguishes between the conscious experience, that he calls the"phenomenal properties of the mind", and the mental states that causebehavior, that he calls the "psychological properties of the mind" (that is"cognition"). In other words, phenomenal states deal with the first-personaspect of the "mental", whereas psychological states deal with the third-person aspect of the mental.Psychological properties have, by his definition, a "causal" role indetermining behavior. Whether a psychological state is also a phenomenal(conscious) state does not matter from the point of view of behavior. Whatconscious states do is not clear, but we know that they exist because we"feel" them.Mental properties can therefore be divided into psychological properties andphenomenal properties. These two sets can be studied separately. It turnsout that psychological properties (such as learning and remembering) have

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been and are studied by a multitude of disciplines, such as Biology andNeurology, and in a fashion not too different from physical properties ofmatter (given their "causal" nature), whereas phenomenal propertiesconstitute the "hard" problem. A psychological property causes somebehavior, no less than most material properties. A phenomenal property is afuzzier object altogether.Chalmers also distinguishes awareness and consciousness: awareness is the"psychological" aspect of consciousness. Whenever we are aware, we also haveaccess to information about the object we are aware of. Awareness is thataccess. It is a psychological state that has a "causal" nature."Consciousness" is a term more appropriately reserved for the phenomenalaspect of consciousness (for the emotion, for the feeling).Chalmers is, de facto, separating the study of cognition from the study ofconsciousness. Cognition is a psychological fact, consciousness is aphenomenal fact. Psychological facts, by virtue of their causal (orfunctional) nature, can actually be explained by the physical sciences. Itis not clear, instead, what science is necessary to explain consciousness.To start with, Chalmers focuses on the notion of supervenience.Chalmers goes to a great extent to clarify the theory of supervenience. Aset Y of properties supervenes on a set X of properties if any two systemsthat are identical by properties X are also identical by properties Y. Forexample, biological properties supervene on physical properties: any twoidentical physical systems are also identical biological systems."Logical" supervenience (loosely, "possibility") is a variant ofsupervenience: some systems could exist in another world (are "logically"possible), but do not exist in our world (are "naturally" impossible).Elephants with wings are logically possible, but not naturally possible.Systems that are naturally possible are also logically possible, but notviceversa. For example, any situation that violates the laws of nature islogically possible but not naturally possible.Natural supervenience occurs when two sets of properties are systematicallyand precisely correlated in the natural world. Logical supervenience implies

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natural supervenience, but not viceversa. In other words, there may beworlds in which two properties are not related the way they are in ourworld, and therefore two naturally supervenient systems may not be logicallysupervenient.Chalmers then argues that most facts supervene logically on the physicalfacts: if they are identical physical systems, then they are identical,period. There are few exceptions and consciousness is one of them.Consciousness is not logically supervenient on the physical.Thus Chalmers concludes that consciousness "cannot" be explained by thephysical sciences (more appropriately, cannot be explained "reductively").But Chalmers does not conclude that consciousness cannot be explained toutcourt: only that it cannot be explained the way the physical sciencesexplain everything else, i.e. by reducing the system to ever smaller parts.Chalmers leaves the door open for a "nonreductive" explanation ofconsciousness.Chalmers does not rule out "monism", the theory that there is only onesubstance; he only rules out that the one substance of this world is matteras we know it with the properties we currently know.Chalmers’ theory of consciousness is a variant of "property dualism": thereare no two substances (mental and physical), there is only one substance,but that substance has two separate sets of properties, one physical and onemental. Conscious experience is due to the mental properties. The physicalsciences have studied only the physical properties. The physical sciencesstudy macroscopic properties like "temperature" that are due to microscopicproperties such as the physical properties of particles. Chalmers advocatesa science that studies the "protophenomenal properties" of microscopicmatter that can yield the macroscopic phenomenon of consciousness.Electromagnetism could not be explained by "reducing" electromagneticphenomena to the known properties of matter: it was explained whenscientists introduced a whole new set of properties (and related laws): theproperties of microscopic matter that yield the macroscopic phenomenon ofelectromagnetism.

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Similarly, consciousness cannot be explained by the physical laws of theknown properties but requires a new set of "psychophysical" laws that dealwith "protophenomenal properties". Consciousness supervenes naturally on thephysical: the "psychophysical" laws will explain this supervenience, i.e.they will explain how conscious experiences depend on physical processes.Chalmers emphasizes that this applies only to consciousness. Cognition isgoverned by the known laws of the physical sciences.Chalmers then turns to the relationship between cognition and consciousness.Phenomenal (conscious) experience is not an abstract phenomenon: it isdirectly related to our psychological experience. Consciousness interactswith cognition and that interactaction gets expressed via what Chalmerscalls "phenomenal judgements" ("I am afraid", "I see", "I am suffering").These are acts that belong to our psychological life (to cognition) but thatare about our phenomenal life (consciousness).Chalmers is faced with a paradox: phenomenal judgements, that are aboutconsciousness, belong to cognitive life, therefore can be explainedreductively, but he just proved that consciousness cannot be explainedreductively. The way out of the paradox is to assume that consciousness isnot relevant, that we can explain phenomenal judgements even if/when wecannot explain the conscious experience they are about, i.e. the explanationdoes not depend on "that" conscious experience, i.e. "that" feeling oremotion is irrelevant.Chalmers cautions that this conclusion does not necessarily imply thatconsciousness (as in "free will") is irrelevant for behavior, but it surelydoes smell that way. If we can explain behavior about consciousness withoutexplaining consciousness, it is hard to believe that behavior requiresconsciousness.Chalmers takes these facts literally: our statements about consciousness arepart of our cognitive life, and therefore can be explained quite naturally,just like any other behavior. I speak about my feelings the same way I raisea hand. There is a physical process that explains why I do both. It alsohappens that we "are" conscious, not just that we talk about it, and that

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part cannot be explained (yet). If we had a detailed understanding of thebrain, we could predict when someone would utter the words "I feel pain". SoChalmers believes that our talk about consciousness will be explained justlike any other cognitive process, just like any other bodily process. Thisis not the same as explaining the conscious feelings themselves, and itleaves open the option that feelings are but an accessory, an evolutionaryaccident, a by-product of our cognitive life with no direct relevance to ouractions.Chalmers also offers an explanation of phenomenal judgement based on thetheory of information. After all, his definition of "cognition" is prettymuch that of "information processing": cognition is the processing ofinformation, from the moment it is acquired by the senses to the moment itis turned into bodily movement.Information is what "pattern" is from the inside. Consciousness isinformation about the pattern of the self. Information becomes therefore thelink between the physical and the conscious.Since information is ubiquitous, he also gets entangled in the questionwhether everything has feelings. If experience is ultimately due toinformation, there is no reason why anything would not be associated with"experience". Just like every other physical property that we know to bewidespread in the universe, there is no reason why "experience" (defined asthe macroscopic effect of "protophenomenal properties") should not bewidespread. Objects that implement an information-processing system may wellhave a degree of consciousness. Chalmers "natural dualism" is therefore aclose relative of "panpsychism".Furthermore, if information leads to experience, there must be a lot moreexperience than we "feel" because the brain processes a lot more informationthan we are aware of. But then parts of the brain may have experience thatdoes not travel to the "I". The "I" is not necessarily all that isexperienced by the brain. The "I" may simply be a chunk of coherentinformation out of the many that arise all the time in the brain.Ultimately, David Chalmers believes that it makes no sense to talk of pieces

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of consciousness. Consciousness "is" the experience of being the subject,so, by definition, it is a unity: it is all of which I am the subject at acertain time. This has implications for any theory of consciousness, becausethe reductionist approach (splitting the problem into smaller problems) is,by definition, doomed to failure: consciousness cannot be split lest youlose precisely consciousness, and then you are no longer analyzingconsciousness. Consciousness can only be studied as the state of being thesubject, which is fundamentally different from the study of what and howenables the brain to integrate different processes. What is needed is aholistic approach to consciousness.PanpsychismThe Roman philosopher Lucretius of the first century B.C. once observed that"every creature with senses is made only of particles without senses". Theparadox still stands. Descartes did not solve it by simply separating"sense" (conscious mind) from "non-sense" (matter) and subsequentphilosophers did not solve it no matter how they looked at the relationshipbetween mind and matter.The solution to the paradox has always been around, and it only requiredaccepting that our mind is nothing else than a natural phenomenon.For example, in the 1930s the British mathematician Alfred Whitehead arguedthat every particle in the universe must be an event having both anobjective aspect of matter and a subjective aspect of experience. Somematerial compounds, such as the brain, create the unity of experience thatwe call "mind". Most material compounds are limited in their experience tothe experience of their constituents.The USA philosopher Thomas Nagel reached a similar conclusion: that "proto-mental properties" must be present in all matter, and, suitably organized,become somebody’s consciousness. He believed in one, common source for boththe material and the mental aspects of the world. Mental and material arenever separated: there is never the material without the mental, and thereis never the mental without the material.

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The Danish physicist Niels Bohr once suggested that the quantum wavefunction of matter represents its mental aspect, that the wave of theelectron is the equivalent of the mind of matter. Bohr suggested that theduality of waves and particles could explain the duality of mind and matter.After all, the wave of probability could be interpreted as expressing a"free will" of the electron, a primitive "mental life" of its own. The dualaspect of body and mind within an organism would derive from the dual aspectof the particles composing an organism, from the dual aspect of wave andparticle.Panpsychism (the notion that everything is conscious to some extent) is thesimplest way to explain why some beings (e.g., me) are conscious. After allwe don’t wonder why we are made of electrons: everything is made ofelectrons, therefore no wonder that my body too is made of electrons. Wewonder why we are conscious because we made the assumption that only somethings (us) are conscious. All we have to do is remove that assumption andwe have a simple theory of consciousness.A General Property of MatterThe Italian mathematician Piero Scaruffi offered his variant on panpsychism("A simple theory of consciousness", 2001).I am conscious. I am made of cells. Cells are made of molecules. Moleculesare made of atoms, and atoms are made of elementary particles. If elementaryparticles are not conscious, how is it possible that many of them, assembledin molecules and cells and organs, eventually yield a conscious being likeme?Many attempts have been made at explaining consciousness by reducing it tosomething else. To no avail. There is no way that our sensations can beexplained in terms of particles. So, how does consciousness arise in matter?Maybe it doesnt arise, it is always there.No matter how detailed an account is provided of the neural processes thatled to an action (say, a smile), that account will never explain where thefeeling associated to that action (say, happiness) came from. No theory of

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the brain can explain why and how consciousness happens, if it assumes thatconsciousness is somehow created by some neural entity that is completelydifferent in structure, function and behavior from our feelings.From a logical standpoint, the only way out of this dead-end is to acceptthat consciousness must be a property of the particles that make up my body.When we try to explain consciousness by reducing it to electrochemicalprocesses, we put ourselves in a situation similar to a scientist whodecided to explain electrical phenomena by using gravity. Electricalphenomena can be explained only if we assume that electricity comes from afundamental property of matter (i.e. from a property that is present in allmatter starting from the most fundamental constituents) and that, underspecial circumstances, enables a particular configuration of matter toexhibit "electricity".Similarly, if consciousness comes from a fundamental property of matter(from a property that is present in all matter starting from the mostfundamental constituents), then, and only then, we can study why and how,under special circumstances, that property enables a particularconfiguration of matter (e.g., the human brain) to exhibit "consciousness".Any paradigm that tries to manufacture consciousness out of something elseis doomed to failure. Things dont just happen. Ex nihilo nihil fit.Consciousness cannot simply originate from the act of putting unconsciousneurons together. It doesnt appear like magic. Conductivity seems to appearby magic in some configurations of matter (e.g. metallic objects), buttheres no magic: just a fundamental property of matter, the electricalcharge, which is present in every single particle of this universe, aproperty which is mostly useless but that under the proper circumstancesyields the phenomenon known as conductivity.Particles are not conductors by themselves, just like they are notconscious, and most things made of particles (wood, plastic, glass, etc.etc.) are not conductors (and maybe have no consciousness), but each singleparticle in the universe has an electrical charge and each single particlein the universe has a property, say, C. That property C is the one that

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allows our brain to be conscious. It is not that each single particle isconscious or that each single piece of matter in the universe is conscious.But each single particle has this property C which, under the specialcircumstances of our brain configuration (and maybe other brainconfigurations and maybe even things with no brain) yields consciousness.Just like electricity and gravitation are macroscopic properties that arecaused by microscopic properties of the constituents, so consciousness maybe a macroscopic property of our brain that is caused by a microscopicproperty of its constituents. Just like electrical phenomena can only bereduced to smaller-scale electrical phenomena (all the way down to theelectrical charge of each single constituent), so consciousness can only bereduced to smaller-scale conscious phenomena.Property C has not been found by Physics for the simple reason that Physicswas not built to find it: Physics is an offshoot of Descartes dualism,which strictly separated mind and matter and assigned Physics to matter.Newtons Physics was built to explain the motion of bodies, and that is whatit explains. It did not find elementary particles and it did not findentropy. It was built to explain bodies. Relativity was built to explain theconstant speed of light, electromagnetism and gravitation. And that is whatit explains. It did not find quarks either, because it was not built tostudy atoms. Quantum Theory, on the other hand, found quarks, because it wasbuilt to study the atom. But it did not find black holes, because it was notbuilt to study gravitation.Scaruffi’s theory is neither dualistic nor materialistic. Like dualists, headmits the existence of consciousness as separate from the physicalproperties of matter as we know them; but at the same time, likematerialists, I consider consciousness as arising from a "physical" property(that we have not discovered yet) that behaves in a fundamentally differentway from the other physical properties. So in a sense it is not a "physical"property, but it is still a property of all matter. Mine is an identitytheory, in that I think that mental correspond to neural states, but it goesbeyond identity because I also think that the property yieldingconsciousness is common to all matter, whether it performs neural activityor not.

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What made Descartes believe in dualism is the unity of consciousness. Butelectrical conductors also exhibit a unity of electricity, and nonethelesselectrical phenomena can be reduced to a physical property of matter.The main problem is the lack of an empirical test for consciousness. Wecannot know whether a being is conscious or not. We cannot "measure" itsconsciousness. We cannot rule out that every object in the universe,including each elementary particle, has consciousness: we just cannot detectit. Even when I accept that other human beings are conscious a) I base myassumption on similarity of behavior, not on an actual "observation" oftheir consciousness; and b) I somehow sense that some people (poets andphilosophers, for example) may be more conscious than other people (lawyersand doctors, for example).The trouble is that our mind is capable only of observing consciousphenomena at its own level and within itself. Our mind is capable ofobserving only one conscious phenomenon: itself.A good way to start would be to analyze why consciousness is limited to thebrain. Why does consciousness apply only to the brain? What is special aboutthe brain that cannot be found anywhere else? If the brain is made ofordinary matter, of well-known constituents, what is it that turns thatmatter conscious when it is configured as a brain, but not when it isconfigured as a foot?A Reductionist Theory of the SelfThe "I" is the central problem of consciousness. Even if we eventuallyexplain how conscious experience arises from the electrochemical processesof the brain, even if we discovered some kind of "proto-consciousness" thatgets combined to form emotions and feelings, we will still need to show howand why that set of emotions and feelings becomes a "I".That matter can feel emotions is a mystery enough. But what we feel is evenstranger: it is not that each part of our body, each molecule feelsemotions. It is "I" that feels those emotions.

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A body is made of parts that interact, and each one has its own life. But aconsciousness is an "I" that feels all of the emotions related to that body.My consciousness is not distributed the same way that matter is distributedin my body.Let us assume that everything is conscious to some degree. Every atom, everymolecule, every tissue, every organ, every being is "conscious". And that"I" is just what I am conscious of. If I were born a finger, I would only beconscious of what a finger does. "I" happen to be born the part of the brainthat is conscious of what I am conscious.In this scenario of multiple "consciousnesses", the "I" that is writing thissentence is not the conscious part of the foot or of the nail, it is theconscious part of a part of the brain. I am not conscious of my footsconsciousness, because "I" am the consciousness of something else (a part ofthe brain).And I am not conscious of the consciousness of any other parts of the brainbecause "I" (the one who is writing right now) am not those parts. "I" amthe consciousness of a part of the brain, and it turns out that "I" (thisparticular consciousness) receive information from several parts of the bodyand direct order to several parts of the body. For example, it is likelythat the "consciousnesses" associated with my fingers are conscious oftyping on the keyboard. They have to, because the brain tells them to. "I"(the consciousness of that part of the brain) am only aware of sending themthe order to type. Because of the organization of the body, the braincontrols other organs. Because each part is associated with a consciousness,each part is aware of what it is doing. But "I", the consciousnessassociated with this part of the brain, identify with the whole body."I" am actually not conscious of everything. There is a consciousnessassociated with my liver and one with my intestine and one with each ofmillions of minuscule parts. "I" am not aware of any of those parts.I cannot feel that I because "I" am not that I.Evolution has decreed which parts are connected to the part of the brain

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that is associated with "I". "I" am aware only of those parts. The maindifference between "I" and other "consciousnesses" inside this body is that"I" (or the brain part associated with that "I") can tell fingers to typethis sentence, and can tell the mouth to utter words.Of course, there could be another consciousness (another I) that isconscious of parts of my body that I am not conscious of. Maybe there is aconsciousness (another I) that is directing me to think what I am thinkingand directing me to direct the fingers to type what they are typing. Icannot be conscious of this "super-consciousness" or of any otherconsciousness associated with my body, because "I" am not it or them.The reason things do not get out of control is that the structure of"consciousnesses" must mirror the structure of the body, so that an orderissued by a consciousness cannot conflict with the order issued by anotherconsciousness.Finally, in this scenario of multiple consciousnesses, it is not necessarythat "consciousnesses" be truly directing anything. Each consciousness couldsimply be the "phenomenal" aspect of a physical process: any action by abody part also yields a conscious experience that presumes of being thecause of that action. Whether it is consciousness that directs the body orviceversa is another issue.The body is made of parts, each part being made of parts and so forth allthe way down to elementary particles. Each of those parts, all the way downto elementary particles, also has a phenomenal aspect, i.e. its own"consciousness".The consciousness that is writing this sentence is "I". There are countlessconsciousnesses that share this body, each of them conscious of what onepart of the body is doing. They may all be convinced of having free will,just like I am. There may be consciousnesses that share this body and direct"I" to do what "I" am doing.In this scenario, "I" cannot feel any other consciousness than "I", becausethat is what "I" am.